Vancouver - Week 1

Finally we have arrived in Vancouver after months and months of planning. We left Beijing on Thursday (14^th April) at 3.50pm and arrived in Vancouver on the same day at 11.30am. Flying into Vancouver the flight attendant told us that it was 5 degrees in Vancouver (at 11.30am!) lol We got off the plane and wow – it was cold. Managed to get to our Hostel (Same Sun Hostel), which is located on Granville Street, right in the heart of Downtown Vancouver. First thing was first – we were straight to a ski shop to get a jacket each. The clothes we had just didn’t cut it. The bus and train systems in Vancouver are really really good and it is easy to get around.

Friday, our first mission was to get a phone, which ended up being relatively easy.  We watched our first Canucks game on Friday night and I started drinking beer, which went down surprisingly well – a little too well. By about 9pm – the game was over (Canucks – Winners) and we went for a walk down Granville Street (this is basically the equivalent of Queen Street Mall to us in Brisbane) and there are heaps of buskers on the street. We were totally blown away by them – our live pub bands are not as good as what we saw. We watched this one guy playing an electric guitar and singing for over half an hour. It was mesmerizing.  I cleaned out the change in my wallet for him. Then after we finally left him – there was a whole group of people – singer, drums, guitar and saxophone all on the street and a whole heap of people around them dancing and just enjoying such good music. It was really fun. The way I am describing it doesn’t really seem to give it justice but It is just amazing how good they are and just playing on the street! We met some other people from our hostel and went to a club/pub about 2 doors down from our hostel call The Cellar. All the clubs here have huge lines and a cover charge - $12 each and about 15 minutes later we were in. While we were waiting in line we could hear the music playing in the club and just assumed that it was a DJ playing music – when we got down there we found that it was actually a live band!!! Unbelievable!

So Friday night ended up being a bit of a blow out and we didn’t get back to the hostel and in bed until about 5am but we had a great night and met lots of people.  Along with the many buskers there are also lots of homeless people and panhandlers – most of them obvious drug addicts! Always asking for money or food. We made an executive decision that we only give money to buskers – no instrument = no money! It can become hard work though, constantly being asked and it gets worse at night time. They even go in to pizza shops, mcdonalds, burger king etc and go through the bins in there for food. It really isn’t pleasant to see but hey, that’s life huh.

We spent the wrest of the weekend searching online for jobs and somewhere to live. We also found out that we didn’t need to have a permanent address to get our SIN number (Canadian version of a Tax File Number) and bank account so on Monday – we got our SIN and bank account sorted. We had also arranged to look at 2 potential placed for us to live.

First was a place in a high rise building on the 18^th floor – it was super fancy and very nice but just didn’t seem like what we wanted. We would have been sharing with just one other guy who apparently works a lot and is never home. Which obviously sounds good but we came here to meet people, interact and have fun. Living in a place where we would basically be by our self all the time just didn’t seem like fun and defeated the purpose of our big adventure.

The next place was a house in Downtown Vancouver – about 2 blocks from our Hostel. Within minutes of being there we knew it was where we wanted to live.  It is a 4 story house, with basement, main level, level 2 and then the attic and guess what – the attic is all ours! Lol It is such a cute room. Pretty big, fully furnished with our own TV, bed, dresser etc (all the essentials). In total there is 10 people that live in the house, from New Zealand, UK, Australia and Canadians. It is a house of girls though, there is only 1 other guy living there (so I think he is a bit happy that Craig is moving in). Michelle (the lady who is the main person of the house) is just awesome. She is hilariously funny and made us feel right at home already. She is a small filmmaker and also does some acting. Such important acting that she has most recently been working as an extra in the new Twilight Movie – Breaking Dawn!!!!!! She has just been kicking it around with Robert Pattinson. Ask me if I was jealous and shocked! She couldn’t really tell me anything bar that she was working in scenes from the wedding – OMG! Lol All in all though the house is awesome. Simple rules to follow and otherwise, I think it is going to be an awesome place to live and meet people who are here doing exactly the same thing as us! So the house is a done deal – we move in on Sunday, 1^st May and we can’t wait!

We just can’t believe how much we have achieved already – 4 working days in and we have everything sorted except for a job! Which is probably the most important thing but we have had a little success in that department as well. Craig had an interview with IGA today. We are pretty sure that he will get the job but it starts out as night shift from lke 3pm – 12pm which isn’t really the best but at the moment, we don’t really care what it is because the more money coming in, means less money going out. Plus, once we have jobs it takes the pressure off a little and we can maybe find a better one. I had an interview too with a recruitment agency about some admin temping roles. So that is a start too.  Fingers crossed that we both get something soon – even if it isn’t the best pay. The first thing we have noticed is that pay is shitty here in vancouver. Minimum wage is depressing to say the least but as long as we can get a job that covers our week to week and maybe a little more - we should be fine!

Hopefully next time we write we will be employed. I don’t have any photos this time – we have been too busy with the important stuff to do much sight seeing but we are planning to get out and about a bit this week hopefully so we will keep you posted J.

Love Mel and Craig

Beijing

We said goodbye to Koh Samui on Sunday afternoon at about 5pm and arrived in Beijing 6.30am Monday. It was a looooooooong night. Our flight from Koh Samui arrived at 8pm in Bangkok and then we had a 5 hour wait for our next flight which was terrible. 5 hours in an airport with nothing to do and tired = terrible!!! We got a little sleep on the plane and then arrived in Beijing just as the sun was coming up. We made the decision that we would catch the subway to our hostel rather than a cab. The hostel website gave great directions but wow – if we were tired on the plane, it definitely didn’t take long to wake up.

We took the Airport Shuttle Train to connect with the main subway of Beijing. Apparently a lot of people catch the subway at 8am on a Monday morning?!?!?! I have NEVER seen so many people before in my life, except maybe at a festival and even that probable didn’t compare to how many people were in such a small space. We were shit scared because we still had 2 more trains to catch, we had our big backpack on our backs and our little day packs on the front and each train is so full, you just have to push to fit on. When the doors open you just push for your life to fit on. Craig’s bag got caught in the doors once or twice, which was fun. Finally arrived at our station (Dongsi Station), which was a massive relief! Walking out into the sunshine was just bliss!! All in all the train rides took us just over an hour, which was pretty good. The subway is really well signed and relatively easy to use but just so dense or should we say THICK with people. I have never played such a hard game of ‘spot the aussie'.

Our hostel was a short walk from the station, which we managed to find. We dropped off our bags but couldn’t check in until 12pm. We decided to go for a walk and see what we could find. The weather here at the moment is just beautiful and such a nice change from the hot and sticky Koh Samui. First thing we noticed while walking around Beijing is how it seems to be the norm to hawk up big gollies and spit them on the ground (men and women). It is the most disgusting thing we have ever experienced! Everyone seems to be sick here which is comforting but hopefully because we are only here for a short time we won’t catch anything. The language barrier is also a little hard. In Thailand they at least spoke a little English but here it is a lot harder to find someone. The people in our Hostel speak fairly good English so that is comforting.

We checked into our hostel (The Happy Dragon Hostel), which is SO cheap and really good. It is costing us about $25 a night and we have our own private room with ensuite! There is a little bar down stairs in the Hostel that sells food and drinks. Monday night they had a ‘Free Roast Duck Night’ so we went and experienced Beijing roast duck! It was awesome!!! We only had 2 full days in Beijing so we booked a tour for each day. Tuesday – The Great Wall of China and Wednesday – City Tour!!!

The Great Wall of China

Seeing The Great Wall of China was absolutely amazing to say the least. There are few different places of the wall that you can visit but we were told that some of them are very touristy and over crowded! It was recommended that we go to the part of the wall called Mutianyu. This section of the wall is approximately 4kms long and has 23 watch towers. There is a chairlift that takes you from the village up to watch tower 6. We took this and walked from watch tower 6 to watch tower 14 (approximately 2kms). It was hard walking – there are SO many stairs and they are all different heights and extremely steep at times. We were exhausted by the time we got to watch tower 14 so we had a little rest and then did it all over again. Thankfully, the way back wasn’t quite so hard because there was more down stairs than up but don’t get me wrong, it still wasn’t easy. It was worth the walk though and we managed to get some amazing pictures!!! I think most of the time we were there it was hard to comprehend that we were actually walking The Great Wall of China. It didn’t seem to sink in!!!! Another reason it was worth it was for the way that we got back down to the village – by Toboggan!!!! It was awesome fun – we only wish we could have gone faster!!!

After 3 hours on the wall we had a beautiful Chinese lunch and then back on the bus for a 2 hour ride back to our Hostel. Another thing you quickly notice about Beijing is the traffic!!! I thought that driving in Thailand was bad but Beijing takes it to a whole new level!!! There are buses, cars, scooters and bikes EVERYWHERE and no one gives way. They are all everywhere over the road and constantly beeping because someone is in their way! I am not sure why they bother having lanes marked and traffic lights because no one seems to pay attention to them anyway. I was scared for my life just being a passenger and I think it was an achievement for us to drive 2 hours there and back and not collect a bike rider or scooter on the way!!!

The Great Wall was definitely one of the high lights of our trip and I am sure is one of the most amazing things that we will ever do.

City Tour

The city tour was a great day. We got to see The Forbidden City, The Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace and we also went to a silk factory and a Tea House. What made it better was that we had our own personal tour guide for the day. Her name was Laura and she spoke really good English. She is studying Chinese History so she was able to tell us a lot about the history, which was really interesting. All of the places were so huge!!!! You would walk through one building and then come out to another huge opening with another group of buildings and this just happens over and over again. It is amazing that such huge places fit in such a compact busy city! The Summer Palace was definitely our favourite. It has a beautiful lake and all up it is over 700 acres in size!!! All the cherry blossoms have just started to bloom so it was very pretty and they have a Dragon Boat that you can take across the lake to the other side. All in all it was a great day but again – so much walking. Not such hard walking but we were exhausted once again by the end of the day.

We had imagined that we would have an early night and be fresh for our flight to Vancouver on Thursday but when we got back to the hostel we decided to have a few drinks…… This started a long night with all the people in the hostel and we managed to get to bed at about 1am. It was definitely worth it though; we met so many people and had such a great night. Thankfully – not sick in the morning so that worked out well!!!!

Well that’s all for Beijing so next adventure is Vancouver so keep a look out and we will post again soon!!!

Mel and Craig xoxox

p.s. Sorry about the long blogs - I hope they are not too boring!! Just been hard to get online so when we do, there is so much to tell!!!

The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China

The Summer Palace

Flooded Koh Samui

Well where to start…..? Since our last blog lots has been happening here in Koh Samui. We arrived here on Tuesday 22^nd March and had great weather for 3-4 days and then it started to rain….. and rain…. and rain!!!! And I don’t just mean rain as in sprinkle, I am talking full on torrential rain – NON-STOP!!! During this time the power in our room would intermittently go on and off which was really annoying too.  On the following Tuesday we woke up, our power had gone out the night before and still wasn’t back on. We went to breakfast at our hotel restaurant which is on the beach – usually the waves are little flappy waves that well, you could hardly even call waves – that morning it was a whole lot different. The waves were as big as what you would see at Burleigh and were breaking into the front of our restaurant. It was something else.

Because of the rain there was nothing really to do other than go to the bars around here and have some drinks, play cards and watch whatever sport was on for the day. We were at the Islander on the Tuesday playing cards and a guy who was sitting by himself started talking to Craig – the conversation begun because Craig was wearing his Origin Jersey and he was from Brisbane. His name was Gerard and he ended up telling us his story about how he was here on a bucks week with a heap of mates and they had rented this huge house up in the hills of Koh Samui – they had all come into Chaweng the night before to party and he had met this chick from UK and stayed the night here – only problem was, because of the rain and flooding, he couldn’t get back up the mountain to his house in the morning. We sat all day drinking with him and then the chick that he had met Karen, met up with us too. Her sister Claire had gone up the mountain the night before and couldn’t get down.  To make matters worse – they were meant to be flying home the next day. Later that day, she turned up at the Islander too. Turns out she had to swim about 400m through flood water to get back to Chaweng. This was about the time that the Manager at the Islander - Damian told us that Koh Samui had been declared a disaster zone because of the floods!!

Gerard ended up getting a room here in Chaweng for the night and we drank with them. We planned to meet the next morning to go to breakfast at the Ark Bar where we are staying. When we went there in the morning, the restaurant was a disaster zone, there was about 10cm deep sand in the restaurant and water and debris everywhere. I must say though, the Thai people here are some of the hardest working people I have ever come across. We had breakfast and by the time we were done, the place was nearly back to normal. They just do not stop. The whole time it was raining, no matter what, every morning they would be out sweeping the paths, making sure that everything looked neat and tidy, even though it was pissing down with rain. Anyway, also during the night our power had gone off and still not come back on. We also heard that the airport had been shut down and so we knew straight away that Karen and Claire wouldn’t have flown home. I think this is when we realized that WOW something serious is going on and we are in the middle of it!!!

As I said before, there was nothing really to do but go to the bars. Plus to make matters worse, because we had no power (and I don’t mean we just didn’t have power in our room – the whole of Koh Samui was out) there were only a few bars that were still open because they had generators. Thankfully the Islander and the Ark Bar were 2 of the very few places that were open. So back to our local we went!!! Early afternoon we were drinking with Gerard, Karen and Claire at the islander and some of Gerard’s Bucks mates turned up there too. His whole group ended up arriving and we drank the afternoon away with them. The boys, I have to say were probably a bad influence because what we didn’t know (but now do) is that in the bars here in Koh Samui you can just buy a bottle from the Bar and then purchase your pre-mixes of your choice. The bottle costs about $20 and then you just have to buy the mixes – cheap HUH!?!?!??! Haha imagine if we could do this in Brisbane – messy messy messy!!! For dinner we went to the Ark Bar with Gerard and while he was on his way there to meet us, he met this guy from San Diego – John. Gerard went to meet back up with his Bucks group and we arranged to meet John later that night to go out.

We went to a few of the places that were open and then we had to go back to our room to get more money (we were seriously blowing out) and told John we would meet him back at the Green Mango (which is a full on night club here in Koh Samui – who had a generator – thankfully!!! Lol) When we got there who do we see but all of the Bucks boys!!! As I was saying before, they had rented this huge house up in the hills, which over the past few days became referred to as ‘The Mansion’!!!! After we got kicked out of the Green Mango (at closing) we decided to go and finally see ‘The Mansion’!!!! and O M G!!!!! Mansion was almost an understatement. It was the craziest place we have ever seen, let alone been in before!!!! My experience in the Mansion was short lived though because you all know me, drink – then I get sick! Lol So it was off to bed for me pretty much as soon as we got there. Craig stayed up partied on with the boys… surprise, surprise!!! Lol

When I woke up in the morning, oh the view!!!!! It was literally on the side of a mountain and the pool hung off the edge!!! It was unbelievable!!! We then went to breakfast oh but don’t worry, we didn’t have to go far because part of living in the Mansion, means that you also get your own maids and cooks. We sat at the table and were served breakfast. Anything and everything that you could want…. Eggs cooked how you ask and enough food to sink a battle ship!!! It was awesome to say the least!!! We headed back to Chaweng after breakfast and back to the Ark Bar we went. By about 1pm that afternoon, we were done!!! Couldn’t go on any longer!!!! We went to bed and didn’t wake until the following morning.

This now brings us to Friday – we woke up and YAY power was back. Chaweng, Koh Samui – was back!!!!! We have not seen any reports about the floods or anything because the only news we get here is Thai news and well, we cannot understand them!!! Lol I am sure you all probably know more about it then we do but we have slowly heard all the stories about how other islands around Koh Samui were evacuated and so, I think we have to be thankful that Koh Samui wasn’t really hit as bad as some of the others. But after 7 days of non-stop rain, no power, no internet, no hot showers, and doing nothing but drink. It was so refreshing to finally have it all back and see the sun again!! We are also thankful that we were not booked to leave during that time. The airport was shut for days and so the back log of people trying to get flights is outrageous. Hopefully by the time we leave, it will all be caught up and no problem.

It has rained intermittently since then but at least the sun is out and we can get out side for some fun!! We hired a scooter and went for a look around the island. Unfortunately, because of the flooding we couldn’t really go far because the roads are still under but they have been getting better and better each day. We are hoping that on Tuesday we should be able to get further and then we really can go and have some fun around the island. I am looking forward to going on the Elephants and just seeing some of Koh Samui before we have to leave on Sunday!!!! It has definitely been an experience so far but we wouldn’t change it for the world. We have met some really good people and I am sure that this is just the start of the many many adventures still to come…. We can’t wait!!!!

Flooded Chaweng Road - About 1km from us - this is a little blow up raft that they were using to get tourists to dry land so that they could go home - there is about 4 people plus 2 kids on that raft along with their luggage.

The Lake - usually very small - apparently it got to 15m above normal height!!!

'The Mansion' - As I said, it was on the edge of a mountain. Not the greatest photo because of the weather but I am sure that you get the idea!!!

The Ark Bar - our home for the last 2 weeks. The water is just near the stray dog to the right - it got right up to where you can see the restaurant!!!!